The King's Mistress: The True & Scandalous Story of the Woman Who Stole the Heart of George I (21 page)

And flutters in her Pride.

So have I known those Insects fair,

(Which curious Germans hold so rare,)

Still very Shapes and Dyes;

Still gain new Titles with new Forms;

First Grubs obscene, then wriggling Worms,

Then painted Butterflies.

The line ‘At length she turns a Bride’ reflects the court gossip that Melusine eventually married George, although whether Pope
meant in Germany or later in England is not clear. Both rumours were given credence by contemporaries. Melusine is portrayed as extreme in her greed, the most corrupt in an age of tremendous corruptibility and bribery.

The poem probably dates from 1719 or shortly after, when Melusine was created Duchess of Kendal, as Pope satirizes her ‘Still changing Names’. The image of Melusine as ‘the first of batter’d Jades’ is particularly harsh. It was not printed, probably deliberately, until after George’s death. Pope was too wise to risk publishing something so disparaging during George’s lifetime.

Sophia Charlotte did not escape Pope’s pen either. He vilifies her in his poem, ‘Artemisia’, George’s ‘queen’ who came with him to England. Here George is set in unflattering comparison with the Persian king Xerxes, whom Artemisia accompanied on his attempted invasion of Greece. In satirizing both Sophia Charlotte and Melusine, Pope was obviously influenced by the contemporary gossip that both were George’s mistresses:

Tho Artemisia talks, by Fits,

Of Councils, Classicks, Fathers, Wits;

Reads Malbranche, Boyle, and Locke;

Yet in some Things methinks she fails,

’Twere well if she would pare her Nails,

And wear a cleaner Smock.

Haughty and huge as High-Dutch Bride,

Such Nastiness and so much Pride

Are oddly join’d by Fate:

On her large Squab you find her spread,

Like a fat Corpse upon a Bed,

That lies and stinks in State.

She wears no Colours (sign of Grace)

On any Part except her Face;

All white and black beside:

Dauntless her Look, her Gesture proud,

Her Voice theatrically loud,

And masculine her Stride.

So have I seen, in black and white

A prating Thing, a Magpye hight,

Majestically stalk;

A stately, worthless Animal,

That plies the Tongue, and wags the Tail,

All Flutter, Pride, and Talk.
³⁰

Another writer who turned a disparaging eye on Melusine was the Tory Jonathan Swift, who despised her and attacked her in both poetry and pamphlets. Some contemporaries believed that she was the ‘cushion’ in his bestseller
Gulliver’s Travels
, though literary critics today believe that Swift was using the allegory of
Gulliver’s Travels
as a general indictment on the cabal of corrupt king’s favourites and Whig ministers.

A century later the satirists’ descriptions were swallowed whole and regurgitated as fact. The
Morning Chronicle
of February 1818, in its section entitled ‘Political Questions’, reported:

George the First, being a gallant person, and devoted to what was called the fair sex in Westphalia, where, among witches, fair is foul, and foul is fair, brought with him to England two ugly fiends to serve him for mistresses, and to make part of his official establishment. One of them was created Duchess of Kendal, the other, Countess of Darlington, to reward their merits in their respective departments, and to encourage the surrender of prudery in younger and handsomer subjects. All this is too notorious to be disputed . . .
³¹

The pseudonymous Captain Samuel Brunt’s
A Voyage to Cacklogallinia: with a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of that Country
of 1727 also attacked the king’s mistress. It portrayed Robert Walpole as a rooster, and Melusine as a hen.

The Hanoverian ministers in general and Melusine in particular were perceived to be ‘sucking England dry’ of money and titles. But if George turned a blind eye to bribery, he scrupulously adhered to the rule that no German could receive a British title. Titles were awarded to his close entourage, but only following their naturalization as British subjects, and then only for life. George’s brother Ernst August became Duke of York in 1716 and young Melusine took the title Countess of Walsingham in 1722.

At the same time Louise was made a countess of the Empire – she received no English title – becoming the Gräfin von Delitz. Trudchen was felt too young to receive a title, but as she achieved one through her marriage to Albrecht Wolfgang zu Schaumburg-Lippe in 1722, it was not deemed necessary.

Unsurprisingly, given the rampant corruption in which the Hanoverians engaged so enthusiastically, George’s first English ministry was rife with faction and discontent, as Whig intrigued against Whig. There were at least two very unhappy members. The most coveted roles of Secretary of State for the North and for the South had gone to Charles Townshend and James Stanhope respectively. One Secretary of State, or ‘Foreign Minister’, was responsible for Northern Europe – the Dutch Republic, Sweden, Denmark-Norway, Poland, Russia, the German states. The other was responsible for Southern Europe – France, Spain, Portugal, the Italian states and the Ottoman Empire. Charles Montagu, Lord Halifax, was appointed First Lord of the Treasury and the Tory
Lord Nottingham became Lord President. Robert Walpole, Townshend’s brother-in-law, became Paymaster (until 1715) and the Duke of Argyll Groom of the Stool to the Prince of Wales.

But George, largely because he disliked their arrogance and self-obsession, sidelined both the great war hero Marlborough and his son-in-law Charles Spencer, third Earl of Sunderland, who had been a secretary of state under Anne. Marlborough, who irritated George with his vaunting of his great victories, was given the relatively lowly post of Captain-General and Sunderland got Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, which was also a demotion.

In his description of the English court after George’s accession the Prussian envoy Bonet writes to his master of Marlborough’s greed:

The man who has been most ardent in his [the king’s] growing displeasure is the duke of Marlborough, who has but his personal merit, and little credit throughout the country due to his insatiable avarice, which renders his riches, and even his friendship and faithful duties useless to society, since the former are buried, and the latter dispensed only for money.
³²

Both Stanhope and Marlborough were extremely bitter at their marginalization. Stanhope believed he should be Secretary of State in Townshend’s place and he and Marlborough formed a cabal to oust Townshend.

As early as November 1714 Oxford gleefully wrote: ‘Germans and Whigs divided amongst themselves . . . two parties . . . now hang out their colours in battle array. Nothing but the fear of the Tories keeps them from outraging each other.’
³³
Townshend and Walpole, who disliked the German ministers’ intervention in English affairs, led one faction, and Sunderland, Marlborough and their good friend William Cadogan another. They attempted to
discredit Townshend in the eyes of the king and to replace him with Sunderland as Secretary of State.

By the summer of 1716 Walpole feared that the machinations against them had reached a crisis. Some of the Germans had made it clear that they favoured the Sunderland faction, and when George went on the first of his visits to Hanover in July – George and Melusine made five visits to Hanover throughout the reign, in 1716, 1719, 1720, 1723 and 1725 – taking Melusine, Bernstorff, Robethon and secretary Stanhope with him, Walpole and Townshend were dismayed. Once Sunderland managed to join the king later in the summer the pair knew they were doomed. Mary Countess Cowper suggested in her diary that everything had been decided even before George and Melusine left London. On July 16 1716 she wrote: ‘A new scheme was let out by the Duke of Marlborough’s friends for the State of the Nation in the next sessions of parliament. By that it was resolved, first, that my Lord Townshend should be turned out (the Duchess of Munster had given me a hint that that was resolved upon before she left London) . . .’
³⁴

Townshend was stripped of his post and offered the relatively lowly position of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He reluctantly accepted, as he and Walpole were determined to maintain the veneer of Whig unity. However he only lasted four months. George, exasperated by his obvious antagonism, dismissed him in the spring. Walpole and many of their colleagues resigned in protest, creating a political schism.

Townshend, one of the ablest politicians of his generation, was not lightly demoted or dismissed by George. Why then did he fall? He was demoted in the first instance because he disagreed with the king on foreign policy and was vocal in his belief that British resources should not be used to aid Hanoverian foreign policy. Bernstorff, for instance, in 1716 had no compunction in advising George to order the English fleet in the Baltic to fight against the
Russian Tsar’s forces to oust the Russians from Mecklenburg, a territory next to Hanover – an action that infuriated Townshend. This was very obviously a Hanoverian and not a British problem. But Stanhope and Sunderland were more amenable to enabling the king and his German advisers to use British resources in Hanoverian matters.

Secondly, George, already on poor terms with his son, perceived the beginning of an alliance between Townshend, Walpole and Georg August. As we shall see in the next chapter, it was not something that they deliberately set out to achieve, but even so it allowed the personal antagonism between the king and the Prince of Wales to explode into the political sphere.

Most importantly, Townshend had earned the loathing of Melusine. It was only with his dismissal that he belatedly realized the extent of her power. In the summer of 1716 he wrote to a Dutch friend: ‘I believe the duchess of Munster [Melusine], Mr Bernstorff, and Mr Robethon could give a much more exact and authentic account of the real causes that produced this event [his demotion and dismissal].’

In 1716 George, wanting to honour Melusine, had created her Duchess of Munster following her naturalization. As such she was elevated to the Irish peerage. She had obviously lobbied for it: her need for security made itself far more apparent in England than it had in Hanover. On 12 June Mary Countess Cowper recorded in her diary: ‘Mademoiselle Schulenberg here about her title . . .’ and on 26 June she wrote: ‘At night I go out with my Lord to take the air, then to Mademoiselle Schulenberg to wish her joy.’
³⁵
But Melusine soon discovered that Irish peerages were distinctly inferior to English ones, and she was furious. She blamed Townshend for her meagre title; he had suggested it to the king.

Historians have condemned her for being petty over her Irish peerage. Though this attitude does not seem consistent with the
image we have of her in Hanover – calm, collected, self-assured – England was a very different environment. In Germany she was used to getting her own way – in Walpole’s words she had become a ‘queen’. The only person who had challenged her authority there was George’s mother, Sophia, and the pair had learned to avoid one another. Whilst in the principality, Melusine had utter confidence in George’s loyalty to her, and any dealings with the Hanoverian courtiers – she had been on intimate terms with most of them since her early twenties – were smooth. All knew the state of affairs and were sensible enough to treat her with respect. There was little opportunity for Melusine to ‘meddle’ in politics, even if she had been inclined to. George and his mother each had very defined areas of interest, leaving no room for Melusine.

By contrast, in England Melusine’s fluent English and easy, diplomatic manner were of enormous use to George. She had a great deal more scope for exerting influence, but this greater freedom brought with it a correspondingly higher chance of failure and disgrace. Less secure, she sought titles and wealth.

It is telling that the English politicians whom both Melusine and George initially favoured were Stanhope and Sunderland, both of whom were charming, urbane, and showed the new monarch and his favourite much respect. Walpole and less markedly Townshend, although both brilliant politicians, were gruff and plain-spoken, Walpole to the point of using gratuitously filthy language. Melusine, a stickler for good manners, and used to the benign dictatorship that was Hanover, was not impressed. Already poorly disposed towards the pair, she used the excuse of her second-rate title to bring Townshend down.

In the late summer Walpole, furious, wrote to Stanhope: